The Not-So-Linear Process of Letting Go.
Not a How-To nor a Simple-Step-To but, a way to understand this woeful process.
It is not always a linear process. Heck, it never is. Not one in which it changes or progresses directly from a certain stage into another.
How many of you have ever experienced this foul feeling of having to let go of someone or something?
Someone who had been a crucial part of your life, someone who had shaped you and helped you become the you that is now, someone who had accompanied your days and nights?
Something who held a sentimental value to you, something that reminded you of a certain timeframe in your life, something that acted as a memoir of your life events?
Not that I’m wishing for you to encounter this kind of experience but, I’m quite certain most of us have experienced the need to let go at some point in our lives.
However big or small it might be.
Sure, there are a lot of articles out there that gave you at the very least, a how-to on the topic of letting go and moving on but, still, it is always much easier said than done.
Those articles might as well mention the five stages of grieve and how by overcoming those one-by-one then you could truly accept the condition and let go.
According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, those five stages of grieve could be jotted down to denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Facing the loss of anything or anyone is a painful process as it is an overwhelming emotion. The effect it may give on people is to not face it, pretending it didn’t happen.
You might as well go by with your day — acting as if nothing is happening, nothing is changing — denying everything. It is only natural for our basic instinct when we felt an abrupt emotion is to push it to the back of our minds; it’s kind of like a defence mechanism we undergo to help us numb the intensity of the state we were in.
We often tend to suppress all of the emotions we might be feeling but sooner or later, something would remind us of it and those that we have been putting away will begin to emerge.
We will be confronted and pressured to face a lot of sorrow and despair we have been neglecting.
And amid of our confused state, not knowing how to deal with the ocean of emotions we are feeling, we sometimes resort to anger to express all of our emotions.
Human tendency is that we don’t want to be seen as weak and vulnerable to others.
Woefully, in order to be able to release all that tensions yet still look strong, we mask the pain by being angry with the situation and the cause of it.
Speaking from a personal experience, dwelling with anger for a long period of time actually led me to feel even more sorrowful and even isolated; isolated from everything that is still good around me.
The more I strayed away from making peace with the situation, the more bitter I got.
As anger tires us, we tend to want to have some breath of fresh air. We might look back at the times where we could do something in a certain different kind of way.
It’s all about the what-ifs and if-onlys that took their toll on our minds. It is not uncommon for us to picture ways of how we could do things differently as if we can affect the outcome of the event that had already passed.
Playing out scenarios after scenarios, altering the storyline to try to depict how everything would turn out to be if certain things had played out differently.
Maybe if I didn’t do that, then it wouldn’t be like this now. Maybe if I reacted differently then I would not be in such an emotionally harrowing place in my life now.
During grief, it is almost certain that one would begin to blame themselves for the situation and question themselves in every kind of way possible. The reality of the situation begins to be more abundant. It is now unavoidable.
The ocean of sadness would start to drown you and all you wanted to do is to be left alone. It all could feel extremely overwhelming to the extent of you just wanting to shut off and retract from existence itself.
In the course of dealing with all that, we might actually be less sociable; not wanting to go out and meet our friends we usually reached out to, might be the outcome.
Dealing with the grief after losing someone or something could very much so be depressing.
Albeit, it is a very natural step during those stages of dealing with the suffering.
It’s totally okay for you to feel like the world is just against you but the next possible step is to actually try to accept the situation.
Accept that everything that had happened, already happened, and it is inevitable. Did not matter be it a major or minor one for indeed, some kind of change happened in your life.
And accepting does not necessarily mean that you have to be happy and uplifted all the time. It would still come with a lot of heartbreak, misery, and grief.
It just means that you have opened your heart, mind, and soul to accept and understand the change you have undergone since then.
Accepting would eventually give you hope, to continue to live just another day, to move forward through the pain, or to try to overcome it.
When my grandmother and one of my closest friends died, I felt like some part of me inside died as well.
I started to trace back on the things I wanted to say to them, the things I wanted to do with them, and all of the canceled plans; and I started blaming myself.
I started to regret the times where I could have just go and see them but didn’t. I started to regret the times where I could have just called them to hear their voices but decided not to.
I started to regret everything.
When past lovers left me, decided that they didn’t want to be with me, I spent one too many times dwelling on the what-ifs. Denying the fact that they’re gone.
I started to blame myself for everything, thinking that maybe I was the problem. Thinking where did I go wrong in the situation, where could I have done differently to make them stay.
I went on and on blaming myself.
But, those were not healthy.
Some might say that the five stages of grieve must be done step-by-step in order for you to fully master the art; starting with denial and ending it all with acceptance.
But, I must say that I have to disagree with that.
From some personal journeys I have had while dealing with loss, dealing with grief is not a linear process.
It is not one that could be overcame using a formula for it’s not a Mathematical function.
It is not one that could be dictated on the How-tos and the Simple-steps.
It is one that someone must face in order to be fine with.
Certainly, I went through all of those five stages but it keeps jumping from one to another.
I could be feeling fine one day, thinking that I have actually made my peace with the situation but, turns out, I could wake up the next day with a huge pang in my chest wondering where I went wrong.
I could be having this anger inside me and then break down into a crying fit when I cruised through the city and suddenly passed those places we used to called ours.
It is totally understandable for you to have accepted everything one day but jumped back to denying the whole thing the next day.
It would not make you a bad person when you went back to hating that person for leaving even though you have sweared last week that you only wished them the best.
It is completely okay for you to wanting to shut off completely after having a jolly night out with your friends because you felt this sudden heartache.
Your feelings are valid.
You just have to at least try and let you take you through the whole process. It might be a long and hard one for some people and it might be the other way around for some other.
But, one thing I know for sure is that pain is not permanent. But, we have to be the one responsible to control it or it might be the thing that destroys us.
Sure, some days might be bad, devastatingly blue even.
But, always keep in your mind that the sun would always came out after the rain.
Good days are surely coming.
So, please, hang on.
